HUNTER NOW HUNTED: Justin Brownlee and his St. John's teammates have a chance to earn a double-bye in the Big East tournament. Coach Steve Lavin (above) said he believes his team won't suffer a letdown tomorrow against Seton Hall.AP

HUNTER NOW HUNTED: Justin Brownlee and his St. John’s teammates have a chance to earn a double-bye in the Big East tournament. Coach Steve Lavin said he believes his team won’t suffer a letdown tomorrow against Seton Hall. (CSM /Landov)

As St. John’s has soared back into the Top 25 for the first time in more than a decade, it has knocked off six ranked opponents, most recently dispatching Villanova in Philadelphia on Saturday.

Now, with wins at Seton Hall tomorrow and at home against South Florida on Saturday night — both under .500 — to close out the regular season, St. John’s would clinch a double-bye in next week’s Big East conference tournament at the Garden.

Given the murderer’s row of opponents St. John’s already has faced — including, at one point, eight straight ranked teams — this should be the easy part, right?

Not so, says senior forward Justin Burrell.

“These games are actually harder,” Burrell said. “You see when a team that, for the lack of a better word, is supposed to win the game, those games are sometimes close, because teams overlook them, or don’t come out with the same intensity. So we’re paying attention, focusing in on Seton Hall and making sure we go out and get a victory.”

Having a bull’s-eye on its back is a new thing for the Red Storm, who climbed to No. 15 in both polls this week because of their current six-game winning streak.

But after the team’s struggles the past three seasons, as well as its early-season losses to Fordham and St. Bonaventure, coach Steve Lavin said he isn’t worried about his team suffering from a letdown this week.

“With this particular group, I haven’t worried about letdowns, only because they’re so hungry, and they haven’t had the degree of success throughout their careers until this season,” Lavin said. “With this group, at the start of the year it was more of a fragile group that hadn’t had success, that had a crisis of confidence, and so it was trying to build the belief that they could win. Now that they’ve had success, they have an appetite for more.

“Now, with that said, [tomorrow] night if we come out and lose by 30, we’ll revisit the discussion and I’ll say, ‘You’re right, we had a letdown,’ ” he said. “But at this point, there hasn’t been any indication of a letdown.”

Lavin’s ability to keep his players focused only will be helped by getting a shot at ending a long road losing streak against their local rivals tomorrow night. The last time St. John’s beat Seton Hall on the road was Feb. 15, 1998.

“We always have a lot of passion when we go play against them guys, because they don’t like us as much as we don’t like them,” senior forward Sean Evans said. “So we’re gonna go over there and try to get a win.”